Deans' stroke musings: Effect of balance support on the energy cost of walking after stroke

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Effect of balance support on the energy cost of walking after stroke

No idea on what this knowledge is useful for. I still have to expend vast amounts of mental energy on walking and staying upright. Then there is thinking about making sure I dorsiflex, bend my knee, heel strike, and try to look forward rather than at the ground.
http://search.naric.com/research/rehab/redesign_record.cfm?search=2&type=all&criteria=J67508&phrase=no&rec=123274
NARIC Accession Number: J67508. What's this?
ISSN: 0003-9993.
Author(s): IJmker, Trienke; Houdijk, Han; Lamoth, Claudine J.; Jarbandhan, Ameerani V.; Rijntjes, Danielle; Beek, Peter J.; van der Woude, Lucas H..
Publication Year: 2013.
Number of Pages: 7.
Abstract: Study examined the influence of balance support on the energy cost of treadmill and overground walking in ambulatory patients with stroke. Of the 24 subjects, 12 subjects used a walking aid in daily life (dependent ambulators), and the other 12 did not (independent ambulators); all able to walk for at least 5 minutes. Energy cost and temporal gait parameters (walking speed, mean and coefficient of variation of stride time, and symmetry index) were obtained during 4 walking trials at preferred walking speed: overground with and without a cane and on a treadmill with and without handrail support. On the treadmill, handrail support resulted in a significant decrease in energy cost of 16 percent, independent of the group. Although dependent ambulators had on average a larger reduction in energy cost than independent ambulators (19 versus 14 percent), this interaction did not reach statistical significance. Interestingly, overground walking with support resulted in an 8 percent reduction in energy cost for dependent ambulators, but a 6 percent increase for independent ambulators. The reduction in energy cost with support was accompanied by changes in temporal gait parameters, most notably an increase in stride time and symmetry and a decrease in stride time variability. Balance support can result in a significant reduction in the energy cost of walking, the magnitude of which depends on walking ability and the walking task.